"Cliff Notes - As I Lay Dying" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

At the end, you don't know what the Bundrens' plans are. Samson just hears them drive off toward New Hope. He supposes they can cross the river "up by Mount Vernon," which would put them 18 miles from Jefferson.

30. DEWEY DELL

Dewey Dell's confused thoughts reach a fever pitch in this section. Her mixed feelings about her abortion and her mother's death clash with the memory of a nightmare and a homicidal fantasy about Darl. Faulkner sets some of her deeper and more urgent reflections in italics.

As the sign indicating the turn for New Hope looms into sight, Dewey Dell reaches a moment of decision. Should she tell Anse to turn? If she does, she realizes, "We wont have to go to town." Notice she doesn't say, "We wont be able to go to town." Why do you suppose she doesn't?

Look for answers to that question in the flurry of thoughts--many of them incomplete--that surround her statement. She thinks of the "agony and the despair of spreading bones"--a birth image, perhaps, similar to the feeling she had in section 14.

This thought runs into a description of Darl focusing his eyes on her. As his eyes rise to her face, she feels them strip her naked, exposing her. Abruptly she recalls a nightmare of waking "with a black void rushing under me" and of Vardaman stabbing a fish. She thinks of killing Darl. This series of images--an objective correlative that evokes hate--is her fiercest thought yet in association with Darl.

Her thought of murder butts against her memory of the nightmare she began to think about in the previous paragraph. You don't have to understand this nightmare to realize what it reveals about Dewey Dell's emotions. It is another objective correlative--a story that calls up the emotion Faulkner wants you to share with Dewey Dell. Is the emotion fear? Terror? Whatever it is, the emotion provides the context for her fleeting thought about not having to go to Jefferson. She is frightened and for a moment unsure that she wants an abortion.

NOTE: "I BELIEVE IN GOD" They pass the turn off to New Hope, and Dewey Dell expresses her faith in God. Why do you suppose she does this, here and at the end of the chapter, after reporting Darl's taunt to Jewel about the buzzard? Have you ever decided on a course of action without knowing where it would lead? If so, you might have said something like, "Well, now it's in the hands of fate."

Dewey Dell contrived to put herself in the hands of fate during her seduction by Lafe. She seems to be doing something of the same sort here.

31. TULL

The fact that the Bundren family is a study in contrasts is never made clearer than in this section. Read this section to learn how the Bundrens' many differences shape their reactions to obstacles.

Tull has hitched his mule to his wagon and followed the Bundrens to the banks of the swollen river. They're sitting in their wagon looking at the collapsed bridge when he catches up to them.

NOTE: ANSE'S REACTION TO THE BRIDGE Tull can't fathom Anse's attitude. He finds the head of the Bundren clan looking at the bridge with a "kind of pleased astonishment." Samson, in section 29, noticed Anse react in a similar way when he heard how high the water had risen. "I be durn," Samson said, "if he didn't act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself." What could Faulkner be getting at, describing Anse this way? Could it be that Anse is pleased, secretly glad to confront such an enormous obstacle? Or could Anse be one of those people whose physical expressions always seem inappropriate, like people who laugh when the occasion calls for tears?

Despite his look of pleasure, Anse is hesitant. Dewey Dell isn't, however. She looks at Tull the same way she looked at Samson, "her eyes... going hard like I had made to touch her." She's determined now to cross the river. She reminds Anse twice that "Mr Whitfield crossed it." Tull points out that Whitfield came across three days earlier, when the river was five feet lower.

Anse says that they'll probably be safe since he made his promise to Addie "in the presence of the Lord." But he is incapable of making a decision to cross.

As earlier, it is Jewel, the man of action, who makes the decisive move. Jewel snarls contemptuously at Tull before moving his horse and telling the family to "come on."

32. DARL

This section is a flashback. Read it for the insights it gives you into Jewel and Addie's special relationship.

NOTE: FLASHBACKS Faulkner uses flashbacks sparingly in this book. However, he does use them here, just before the crossing, and just after the crossing in sections 39, 40, and 41. The flashbacks deepen the meaning of the climactic crossing by telling us more about the characters even the dead one, Addie. Also, by making you jump from the past to the present, the flashbacks are a kind of springboard that heightens the effects of the climax.

Three years earlier, Darl explains, when Jewel was 15, he took to sleeping on his feet. His mother and older brothers worried about him. He was losing weight.

It was when Addie began hiding things for Jewel to eat that Darl began to realize that the two had a special relationship. And he suspected that the relationship concealed a secret. Darl noticed Addie sitting in the dark next to Jewel when he was asleep. She was hating Jewel, Darl reasoned, for making her love him so much that she was forced to deceive others.

His older brothers realize that Jewel is staying out all night. Cash follows Jewel and discovers that he has been spending his nights clearing 40 acres of land for old Lon Quick.

One day Jewel rides up to the Bundrens' field with the spotted horse he bought with his earnings. Addie is there. She cries when she learns what happened.

NOTE: ADDIE'S RELATIONSHIP WITH JEWEL What is the secret that this episode reveals to Darl? Why does Addie cry? And why does Jewel stare down at her from his horse, "his face growing cold and a little sick looking, until he looked away quick"?

These are all important question--ones Faulkner raises here but does not answer directly. Some readers feel that Addie's tears are tears of relief over learning that Jewel is safe. Others feel that she cries so hard because she realizes that she is losing Jewel, that he is transferring his affections to the horse.